Celebrating Attwater’s prairie chickens and their habitat
The Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge has a panoply of native plants that harbor native prairie chickens that are too tough to die.
Attwater’s prairie chickens lived for centuries on 6.5 million acres of Gulf Coast prairies with tall grasses swaying like sea waves beneath the spring breeze. An efflorescence of spring wildflowers covered the prairie like an artist’s palette of resplendent colors.
The prairie stretched 75 miles inland between presentday Corpus Christi and Bayou Teche, La., and held more than a million prairie chickens.
Near the close of the 20th century, the vast prairie had shrunk to one-half of 1 percent of its former realm. The population of prairie-chickens had plunged to fewer than 50 wild birds clinging to existence on remnant Texas prairies. They were long since gone from Louisiana.
Anglo settlers arriving in Texas during the early 1800s plowed prairies for crops and grazed cattle on prairie grasses. The coup de grace for the once great swaths of native prairies came in the 20th century, as people paved grasslands with concrete to build cities, sprawling suburbs and shopping centers.
While small pockets of prairie persisted, the prairie chickens could not keep going without extensive native grounds where they could scoot among dense clumps of grass for food and shelter while establishing breeding territories to harbor chicks.
A native prairie is what the
Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge gave the little brown-barred chickens, which are actually a species of grouse, with short fan-shaped tails.
“The Attwater’s prairie chicken is an icon for conserving prairie resources for potential flood reduction, cleaner water and higher biodiversity, which can affect our economy,” said Sumita Prasad, vice president for Friends of Attwater Prairie Chicken Refuge.
Extraordinary work by refuge personnel and wildlife biologists, which included captive breeding and prairie management, enabled wild prairie chickens to rebound to about 104 birds by 2015.
Then Hurricane Harvey hit in August 2017, causing catastrophic flooding in our communities — and inundating delicate prairie preserves.
Yet the indomitable prairie chickens prevailed, with a holdout of roughly 40 wild birds.
The upcoming Booming-NBlooming Festival, April 14-15 at the refuge, offers a chance to the see male prairie chickens gather on a grassy mound called a lek to perform an ancient courtship dance as elaborate as anything a choreographer could imagine.
The males rapidly tap their feet, do jumping jacks and lower their heads to inflate bright orange air sacs on their necks while flaring their tails and humming a deep-toned “wooo-ooo-looo” call that echoes for a half mile.
But the birds need prairies, and so do we.